Worms at work

The 2000 worms are now installed in their new homes, and (hopefully) hard at work eating through our kitchen scraps and autumn leaves.

I should have taken a photo of the worm feeding tubes before they were installed, but basically they're large diameter tubes, about 50cm long, with 15mm holes cut randomly into the bottom half. They're sunk more than halfway down into the soil, and the (pierced) lids from the worm buckets fitted almost perfectly on top to keep out pests, keep it from drying out, and so the worms aren't exposed to direct sunlight.



We left the worms to settle in for a few days before starting planting.



So the watering tube is at one end of each bed (at the bottom of this photo), and the worm feeding tube is halfway along on one side (to make it easy for the kids to feed the worms). The beds are heavily mulched, and the soil is staying quite moist underneath. So far the plants seem to have coped with transplanting, and no snails have discovered them yet! At this stage, we've planted brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, snowpeas and onions, and I have some winter lettuce & pak choi to go in.

And did I mention we have a new apple tree, a new lemonade tree and are thinking about berries and hazelnuts?